President Obama is either fed up with Congress or he’s testing his own administration’s mettle. Or both.

On Wednesday, Obama took a now-familiar path in adopting a program–this time a jobs and infrastructure effort–that can happen entirely within his domain. Obama directed several federal agencies to identify “high-impact, job-creating infrastructure projects” that can be expedited now, without congressional approval.

One week before he will make a major address to Congress on jobs, Obama is making sure they know he plans to move forward without them. The president has also directed the Education Department to come up with a “Plan B” updating the 2001 No Child Left Behind law in the absence of congressional action. The message to Congress is clear: Do your work or we’ll do it for you.

“Congress hasn’t been able to do it, so I will.” With this bold statement, President Obama announced last Friday that he would unilaterally replace the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) with conditions-based waivers. Obama’s waiver strategy is an alarming misuse of executive power that undermines the separation of powers.

In and of itself, the use of waivers is not unconstitutional. Congress has the authority to create laws with provisions that allow the President to grant exceptions in certain circumstances. NCLB does, for instance, authorize the Secretary of Education to grant waivers to applicants that meet certain criteria. However, waivers are not written as blank checks of authority for the President to bypass Congress and enact new policy.

In this case, the President is using waivers to rewrite the law. The Obama waivers go far beyond the measures allowed by NCLB. To receive a waiver, states must agree to implement a new set of goals and programs determined not by Congress, but by the White House.

For months, President Obama and Congressional Republicans have disagreed on how to reform NCLB. There are major problems with the law’s intrusive regulations. But the Obama administration decided that the “do-nothing Congress” could not be trusted to act and so the President is acting without them.

But co-opting the waiver power to craft a new laws designed in and implemented by the White House is a departure from the constitutional separation of powers.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to craft the nation’s laws and to reform those laws when they do not work as planned. The executive is authorized to carry out the laws passed by Congress. But this can be quite bothersome for a President if Congress doesn’t see things his way.

HONOLULU — President Obama is heading into his re-election campaign with plans to step up his offensive against an unpopular Congress, concluding that he cannot pass any major legislation in 2012 because of Republican hostility toward his agenda.

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However the White House chooses to frame Mr. Obama’s strategy, it amounts to a wholesale makeover of the young senator who won the presidency in 2008 by promising to change the culture of Washington, rise above the partisan fray and seek compromises.

After three years in office, Mr. Obama is gambling on a go-it-alone approach. In the coming weeks, he will further showcase measures he is taking on his own to revive the economy, Mr. Earnest said, declining to give details.

President Barack Obama is entering his fourth year in office having calculated that he no longer needs Congress to promote his agenda and may even benefit in his re-election campaign if lawmakers take little action in 2012.

Devoid of any major policy pushes, much of the year will instead be focused on the biggest goal of all: winning a second term.

Power: Given the president’s end-runs around Congress, his shredding of the Constitution and his assault on the authority of the courts, a second term free of electoral restraints may be a frightening prospect.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News commentator, raised the question on Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” show Wednesday. And while it seems fanciful in light of the safeguards built into our democracy and its institutions, it recognizes the threat posed by the president’s policies and actions if left unchecked.

“I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism,” Napolitano opined. “A few months ago he was saying, ‘The Congress doesn’t count, the Congress doesn’t mean anything, I am going to rule by decree and by administrative regulation.’

“Now he’s basically saying the Supreme Court doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter what they think. They can’t review our legislation. That would leave just him as the only branch of government standing.”

Some would consider this borderline hyperbole. But this is, after all, a president who has said he can’t wait for Congress to act and will govern by executive order and regulations if necessary. He has questioned the Supreme Court’s “unprecedented” review of ObamaCare.

As the Department of Justice turned in its homework assignment on the judicial review of the constitutionality of laws, it was a reminder that this is an administration that’s already been found in contempt of court by a federal judge.

In February of last year, Louisiana Federal District Court Judge Martin Feldman found that the Obama Interior Department was in contempt of his ruling that the offshore oil drilling moratorium, imposed by the administration in 2010, was unconstitutional. After Feldman struck down the initial drilling ban, the Interior Department simply established a second ban that was virtually identical.

Judge Feldman was not amused. “Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in his ruling. “Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second moratorium … provides this court with clear and convincing evidence of its contempt.”

As for Congress, we see the same dismissive tone. “Whenever Congress refuses to act, Joe and I, we’re going to act,” Obama said in February at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, with Vice President Joe Biden off to the side. “In the months to come, wherever we have an opportunity, we’re going to take steps on our own to keep this economy moving.”

When cap-and-trade failed to make it through Congress — a Congress that had specifically denied the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate so-called greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act — the Obama administration, with the support of the usual suspects in the media, went ahead, unleashing the EPA to make war on coal and other fossil fuels.

In April 2009, Time Magazine ran a piece titled, “EPA’S CO2 Finding: Putting a Gun to Congress’ Head.” The New York Times editorialized that if Congress fails to ram through cap-and-trade legislation, the EPA should ram it down our throats. And that’s what the administration has been doing.

The whole thrust has been the acquisition of power by the federal government centered on the White House. That is the theme of ObamaCare, which is not about health care but about making people as dependent on government benevolence, if we can use that word, as possible.

Those who stand in the way, whether it be the Supreme Court, Congress or institutions such as the Catholic Church, are to be either ignored when possible, or intimidated and bullied into silence and acquiescence in the proud tradition of President Obama’s mentor, Saul Alinsky.

What is at stake here is freedom and whether we shall be governed by a document that begins with “we the people” or whether we shall be ruled, in totalitarian fashion, by a bill that says “the secretary shall determine” what our rights and freedoms are.

The Constitution and the American way of life is teetering on the edge of a cliff. And Barack Hussein is doing everything he can to push it over and finish the job of “fundamentally transforming America.”

Senate Republican staffers continue to look though the 2010 Obamacare law to see what’s in it, and their latest discovery is a massive $17 trillion funding gap.

“The more we learn about the bill, the more we learn it is even more unaffordable than was suspected,” said Ala. Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republican’s budget chief in the Senate.

“The bill has to be removed from the books because we don’t have the money,” he said.

The hidden shortfall between new Obamacare spending and new Obamacare taxes was revealed just after Supreme Court judges grilled the law’s supporters about its compliance with the constitution’s limits on government activity. If the judges don’t strike down the law, Obamacare will force taxpayers find another $17 trillion to pay for Obamacare’s spending.

The $17 trillion in extra promises was revealed by an analysis of the law’s long-term requirements. The additional obligations, when combined with existing Medicare and Medicaid funding shortfalls, leaves taxpayers on the hook for an extra $82 trillion over the next 75 years.

The federal government already owes $15 trillion in debt, including $5 trillion in funds borrowed during Obama’s term.

That $82 billion in unfunded future expenses is more more than five years of wealth generated by the United States, which now produces just over $15 trillion of value per year.

The $82 trillion funding gap is equal to 28 years of the the current federal budget, which was $3.36 trillion for 2011.

The new $17 trillion funding gap is five times the current federal budget.

Currently, the Social Security system is $7 trillion in debt over the next 65 years. Medicare will eat up $38 trillion in future taxes, and Medicaid will consume another $2o trillion of the taxpayer’s wealth, according to estimates prepared by the actuarial office at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The short-term cost of the Obamacare law is $2.6 trillion, almost triple the $900 billion cost promised by Obama and his Democratic allies, said Sessions.

The same review also showed the Obamacare law added another $5 trillion in unfunded obligations for the Medicaid program.

“President Obama told the American people that his health law would cost $900 billion over ten years and that it would not add ‘one dime’ to the debt… this health law adds an entirely new obligation—one we cannot pay for—and puts the entire financing of the United States government in jeopardy,” Sessions said in a floor speech.

“We don’t have the money… We have to reduce the [obligations] that we have.”

2 Responses to “Obama The Fascist Bringing America Dangerously Close To Totalitarianism”

This president really scares me! All of the people who used to say they would vote Obama in because 8 years of G.W. Bush couldn’t be any worse must either be too dumb to realize what they’ve done, or must be repenting as we speak. This president is trampling on our constitution and imposing his socialist regime on what was once such a beautiful democracy. We are, as the article read, dangerously close to a totalitarian regime. I’m really scared of another four years with him in office. Hi Michael, by the way! How have you been?? Say it with me, I want Bush back!!!!